Throughout the United States there are numerous locations where relatively small accumulations of hydrocarbonaceous waste material exist. Many of these accumulations are too small and/or remote to justify anything but treatment at the site with a temporary and highly mobile process and apparatus. Otherwise the waste material must be transfered over public highways with the consequent increase cost and risk to the public in case of an accident.
One disposal procedure that can be employed at a temporary site utilizes filtration techniques. For example, in the case of hydrocarbonaceous oil field waste, the material to be treated is collected at a site and there mixed with diatomaceous earth followed by filtration on a vacuum filter. By this technique, liquids such as water and oil are separated from solids such as heavy organics, sand, silt, and the like. This procedure is expensive and still leaves liquid and solid fractions to be disposed of.
Another procedure employs chemical treatment to neutralize various chemicals in the mixture to be disposed of and solidifies the final liquid to be disposed of. This procedure also is expensive. Further, it provides no shrinkage by volume or weight of the material to be disposed of so that there is a substantial solid disposition problem that accompanies this procedure.
A much more economical and effecient, in terms of both volume and weight shrinkage, is combustion of the hydro-carbonaceous material to be disposed of. However, combustion of hydrocarbonaceous material can yield a substantial amount of visible emissions in the form of black smoke which is not desirable even if this type of disposal is permitted under the laws and regulations of the regulatory bodies that govern the temporary disposal site. Further, particularly in exploration, production and first step processing of crude oil and natural gas, a substantial amount of material to be disposed of is either mixed with a substantial amount of water, or did not initially contain or has since lost the lighter, more readily combustable hydrogen components. Thus, the mixture to be disposed of contains heavy hydrocarbons that are difficult to combust and are sometimes thoroughly mixed with water which reduces the heating value and combustion efficiency to the point where autocombustion is only possible at high temperatures.
Accordingly, simple combustion at the temporary site is not as easy a disposal solution as it appears on first impression. When environxental concern and portability restrictions are imposed on top of this problem, a substantial challenge is presented.